Advice for / requests to dog owners about poop:
- Don't 'stick 'n' flick'
- Don't bag and hang it or bag and drop it
- Basically that leaves: bin it or take it home (you can buy cheap pong-proof pouches apparently)

Very good reasons coming up: Dog poo, bagged or unbagged, is a serious danger to livestock. Cattle can ingest dog worms from it, causing abortions, and the cow becomes a carrier for life.

Translation: Margate's poverty is a convenient aesthetic that gives my middle class cultural projects a veneer of credibility with my London friends up until the point when we price out Cliftonville's wc and Eastern European migrant communities & then complain it's lost its edge. Still reeling at the clichéd tone-deafness of that three-word headline.

This paragraph. "the gateway of all the eels in thirteen counties"

Herne Bay Minnis Bay tidal pool

Canterbury East station. Is this really a tomato plant? If not, what? @BSBIbotany Oh god the answers to this are all grisly, I wasn't ready for this.

On the Stour estuary, obsolete transport infrastructure - this is the Betamax of channel crossing. One hundred years ago this year, a train ferry service began running from here - locomotives would be transported by ferry from Kent to Calais.

One of the best gifts I've been given was to be shown a phenomenal swimming spot in a former slate quarry in west Wales. It's not a simple thing to find the right pit among the many hollows between the flaking slate mounds and terraces. It was worth the hunt, however - the best outdoor swim experience I've had. Clear and cold as vodka poured straight from the freezer.

I saw a tweet yesterday from an UNRWA figure saying that they would not let Palestinians down despite the withdrawal of US funding. Good. But it ended by warning that loss of services for refugees could lead to 'hatred'. This language unwittingly echoes Palestiphobic tropes. It is noteworthy how often the word hatred is used in association with Palestinians, and this is a link, both conscious and subconscious, that must delight the apartheid regime whenever it is made.

So. You're a leftie of a certain age who worked on a kibbutz in your youth when it was the fashionable thing for some young socialists to do. Your views have evolved, and you are now broadly supportive of the Palestinian cause and oppose the occupation. Some words of advice: When you meet a Palestinian, do not volunteer this information about your time working on a kibbutz without *immediately* apologising and making very clear that you now realise it was wrong to do so.

I'd really like to know where in Britain other people have felt this.

https://twitter.com/gawanmac/status/1035112890687254528

In the far south west of Mull, a taxi driver explained: "There are only two crimes round here: drink driving and tax evasion."

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who think 'May a bird nest in your skull' is a blessing, and those who think it's a curse. Is that a blunt trauma wound in your cranium or are you just pleased to see me?

At Dungeness for one night. This is the book, for anyone wondering:

A thread of some of my non-Twitter writing: Decoding Saffuri
gawmac.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/dec…

I just finished reading Guy Stagg's book, The Crossway - a big achievement, an epic journey and some blistering honesty about his mental health, but the final section left a bad taste in my mouth, I'm sorry to say. The book tells the story of his 10-month journey on foot from Canterbury to Jerusalem, following old pilgrim ways - he's not a believer, but he hopes the journey might somehow help to resolve/contain/move on from painful and traumatic experiences with his health & with addiction.

Visiting Dungeness for the first time later this week. About time, too. Recommendations for where to go, what to see, etc? We're staying one night at the B&B place actually at Dungeness itself. The Jarman place obviously, but apart from that?

It occurs to me that some people might find it hard to read the old newspaper clippings in the 'Men who fall in love with men' thread (

https://twitter.com/gawanmac/status/1004995257824661507

), so here's an alt-thread of the article typed out: Most people have heard of cases where love between two women has been so deep and strong that it has been the dominant power in the life of one of them, if not in both their lives; but it is not often one hears of a man falling in love with a person of his own sex.

A thread of threads: The melancholy caravan thread:

https://twitter.com/gawanmac/status/955131425015193601?s=19

A story in 4 parts

I want to share a few videos from the single most moving gig I've been to. It was February 2016, and the Jungle refugee camp in Calais was facing imminent destruction. The audience at this show had just endured a long, wet, freezing winter in this huge shanty cesspool. The @GoodChanceCal put on what I guess was a kind of farewell show. Some residents had been stuck in the sucking mud of the Jungle for years, more often for months, weeks or just days, facing almost daily violence from French police, fascist thugs and internal tensions.

15 moving, heartbreaking and inspiring minutes featuring Wendell Sayers, a name that doesn't appear in even the LGBT history books. pca.st/oHTh by @MakingGayHistry The acceptance his adoptive father gave him is just beautiful; the loneliness at the end of his life painful to think of.

Bethlem hospital has some really wonderful trees. I've never seen a Scots pine quite like this one. Its bark is really something. At first it made me think of marble.